PARIS, Nov 30: The remains of French writer Alexandre Dumas left Monte Cristo castle on Saturday on the last leg of a journey to Paris where he will be laid to rest beside his friend Victor Hugo and other French luminaries.

One of France’s best loved and most prolific writers, Dumas is famed for “The Three Musketers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”. He died of a stroke in 1870 and was buried in the town of Villers-Cotterets where he was born 68 years earlier.

In March, President Jacques Chirac decreed that Dumas’ remains be transferred to a crypt in the Pantheon, a state mausoleum and official tomb of honour for icons of French history including fellow writer Hugo, Rousseau and Voltaire.

Dumas, the grandson of a female Haitian slave, enchanted readers worldwide with than 250 plays and novels produced with an army of assistants. But his own life was perhaps wilder than those of his most fabled heroes.

Dumas is said to have drawn much of his inspiration from the Caribbean escapades of his father, a mulatto general in Napoleon’s army, who died when Dumas was four years old.—Reuters